A backlink that nobody clicks still counts as a link. What it does not produce is a record: no referral sessions, no sign in your analytics that the linking site exists. "Activating" a backlink means getting visits through it, so that record appears. That much is certain and you can check it. Whether a clicked link is also worth more to Google than an unclicked one is a claim nobody outside Google can verify, and it is worth keeping the two apart.
What a click on a backlink records
When a browser follows a link from another site to yours, it usually sends a Referer header naming the page it came from. How much of that address is sent is decided by the linking page's referrer policy, not by you or by any tool. Your analytics reads the referrer and files the session under a channel.
In Google Analytics 4 that channel is Referral: the default channel group puts a session there when its medium is "referral", "app" or "link". The linking site appears as the session source.
So a clicked backlink gives you three things you did not have: a referrer in your reports, sessions with engagement data behind them, and evidence that the link works, meaning it is on a live page, renders and points where you think it does.
How to see which of your backlinks get clicks
You need two lists and the difference between them.
The links. Search Console's Links report shows your top linked pages and top linking sites. It shows no clicks or traffic; it is a list of links, not of visits. A third-party backlink index gives a longer list.
The clicks. In GA4, open Reports, Acquisition, Traffic acquisition, set the primary dimension to Session default channel group and look at Referral; then switch the dimension to Session source to see the sites. That is every linking site that sent at least one visit in the period.
Sites on the first list and missing from the second have links nobody followed in that window. That gap is the honest answer to "how many of my backlinks are active".
What is known about clicks and link value
Very little, and the evidence often quoted is weaker than it sounds.
Google uses click data in ranking: it says it uses aggregated interaction data, and the antitrust record describes NavBoost, which runs on clicks on search results. That is about clicks on Google's results pages. It says nothing about clicks on a link on someone else's site, which happen away from Google's pages. The 2024 documentation leak describes many link attributes, but no source we could find shows a weight for whether a link gets clicked.
So the claims that "active links pass full value" and dormant ones only "some", or that a profile of unclicked links looks manufactured, are not established. They may be right. They are not something to pay for on faith.
Ways to get a link clicked
Make the page it points to worth reaching. A link to a thin page gets clicked once. If several links point to a page that sends visitors straight back, the page is the problem.
Ask for a better placement. A link in the body text, next to the sentence it supports, gets clicked; a link in a footer or a list of partners rarely does. Site owners who linked to you once are often willing to move it when you offer something better to link to.
Send readers to the linking page. If the link sits in a guest post or an interview, sharing that page brings it readers, and some of them follow the link.
Buy the clicks. A tool opens the linking page in a real browser and follows the link, so the referrer appears in your reports. That is what Link Clicker, our service, does. Two things to know before you do it: each visit also loads the linking page, which belongs to someone else, so keep volumes in proportion to the traffic that page gets; and the visits are records, not readers, so they will not turn into customers.
How to judge the result
Check in GA4 that the linking site appears as a referral source with the sessions you expected. If it does not, the referrer policy of the linking page may be stripping it, or the link is not where you think it is: open the page and look.
Then be careful about the next conclusion. If rankings move in the same weeks, an update, a competitor or seasonality are all live explanations, and a single site gives you no clean way to rule them out.
